“Do you hear?” Edwin stamped on the conflagration.
It was extinguished. Darius, cowed, slowly and clumsily directed himself towards the door. Once Edwin had looked forward to a moment when he might have his father at his mercy, when he might revenge himself for the insults and the bullying that had been his. Once he had clenched his fist and his teeth, and had said, “When you’re old, and I’ve got you, and you can’t help yourself!” That moment had come, and it had even enabled and forced him to refuse money to his father—refuse money to his father! As he looked at the poor figure fumbling towards the door, he knew the humiliating paltriness of revenge. As his anger fell, his shame grew.
Maggie lifted her eyebrows when Darius banged the door.
“He can’t help it,” she said.
“Of course he can’t help it,” said Edwin, defending himself, less to Maggie than to himself. “But there must be a limit. He’s got to be kept in order, you know, even if he is an invalid.” His heart was perceptibly beating.
“Yes, of course.”
“And evidently there’s only one way of doing it. How long’s he been on this mushroom tack?”
“Oh, not long.”
“Well, you ought to have told me,” said Edwin, with the air of a master of the house who is displeased. Maggie accepted the reproof.
“He’d break his neck in the cellar before he knew where he was,” Edwin resumed.